Ends of beginning and beginnings of end...

Well, that's the end of the first ten week course! Thank you very much to all of you who attended and a particular thank you to Dr Elizabeth Drummond Young and Dr Ian Thompson.  From them came the original inspiration for the course and without their support throughout, it would not have run.

But we've not finished yet! We will be running follow up sessions which will take forward the various issues discussed in these introductory weeks. A formal programme will be released in the near future, but, for the moment, expect to see meetings same time, same place, beginning in the New Year. (Wednesdays, Dominican Chaplaincy Edinburgh. 6pm.)

The blog will remain open and I'll be looking to post regularly on matters relevant to Catholic Social Teaching.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Pope's address to European parliament

How, then, can hope in the future be restored, so that, beginning with the younger generation, there can be a rediscovery of that confidence needed to pursue the great ideal of a united and peaceful Europe, a Europe which is creative and resourceful, respectful of rights and conscious of its duties?

To answer this question, allow me to use an image. One of the most celebrated frescoes of Raphael is found in the Vatican and depicts the so-called “School of Athens”. Plato and Aristotle are in the centre. Plato’s finger is pointed upward, to the world of ideas, to the sky, to heaven as we might say. Aristotle holds his hand out before him, towards the viewer, towards the world, concrete reality. This strikes me as a very apt image of Europe and her history, made up of the constant interplay between heaven and earth, where the sky suggests that openness to the transcendent – to God – which has always distinguished the peoples of Europe, while the earth represents Europe’s practical and concrete ability to confront situations and problems.

[From Pope Francis' address to the European Parliament, full transcript here]

Looking forward and looking back (again)

                                                      Where next...?

The discussion at our last meeting (19 Nov) was pretty wide ranging and I won't even try to summarize it all! I think for me the main issue that emerged was the basis of value. For a theistic system, all value in the end is going to depend on God: that allows a (light green) focus on caring for the environment for the sake of its being good for human beings, but also a (dark green) approach based on non human creation having a value (from God) in its own right. That isn't to say that non-theistic philosophies can't also express a dark green viewpoint, but the basis for values which is not based on a value for human beings is much harder to articulate...

The next meeting (this Wednesday 26 Nov) will be our final one and is very much a free for all! There is no fixed agenda, and I intend it to be very much a session where we can pursue any loose ends or refocus on issues that have had less time than they deserved.

A feedback form was distributed at the last meeting which gives you a chance to comment on the course and suggest what we should do next! (Polite versions only!!) An electronic copy is available here. 

Looking forward and looking back

As our next session is about the environment, I thought I'd be economical in my use of posts and combine my usual two posts -one looking back to the last session, one looking forward to the next- into one! (Well, the real reason is pressure of work -but it's a neat story anyway!)

Looking back to our last session on the international aspects of Catholic social teaching (on 12 November) I was struck by two competing views of the future that came up in the discussion: one which questioned whether a narrative about the universal basis for natural (and hence international) law would survive the growing influence of non-Western systems of thought (and hence might be described as pessimistic); and one which took comfort in the growing appropriation of existing standards of international law (say, in the fields of human rights) by new countries.

I suppose the proof of the pudding will be in the eating! As cropped up in the discussion, although Catholic teaching does make claim that there is a natural law, in principle open to human reason unaided by revelation (and thus might expect to take an optimistic view of the future), there is also enough reflection within that teaching on the difficulties of finite and sinful human beings in fact achieving that understanding of natural law to explain any existing or future problems in achieving agreement in fact. Mention in the discussion was made of the Catholic philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre who has, particularly in his work since 1981, stressed the incoherence (and indeed impossibility) of thinking about ethics from outside particular intellectual traditions. (An article about MacIntyre can be found here.)

Looking forward to our next session (19 Nov) on the environment, I suppose one thing to note is that Pope Francis is due to release an Encyclical on this in the near future! (Perhaps we can come up with some suggestions!) One distinction that is sometimes made is between an environmental ethics based on the good for human beings (thus, global warming will harm human beings) and one based on damaging non-human entities in their own right (so even if no human were affected by (say) the loss of a particular species, that would (might?) still be a bad thing to happen.

A helpful article on existing Papal teaching on the environment is here.

An article on Eastern Orthodox perspectives on the environment is here.

An article on philosophical environmental theories is here.

And lastly, a famous 'thought experiment' you might like to reflect on!


At a conference in 1973, Richard Sylvan (then known as Richard Routley) proposed a science fiction thought experiment that helped to launch environmental ethics as a branch of academic philosophy... Routley’s thought experiment came to be known as the "Last Man" argument.

The thought experiment presents you with a situation something like this: You are the last human being. You shall soon die. When you are gone, the only life remaining will be plants, microbes, invertebrates. For some reason, the following thought runs through your head: Before I die, it sure would be nice to destroy the last remaining Redwood. Just for fun.

Sylvan’s audience was left to ponder. What, if anything, would be wrong with destroying that Redwood? Destroying it won’t hurt anyone, so what’s the problem? Environmental philosophers have been trying to answer that question ever since, and you will hear the question echoing through this book.

How would you answer it?

[From here.]

Looking forward: next session 12 November

One of the greatest differences I find when teaching ancient political philosophy is dealing with the relative lack of interest on the part of most classical philosophers (certainly Plato and Aristotle) of any institutions above the small, city state.

In part due to the Christian sense that all human beings (of whatever nationality) matter equally, and to the intertwining of Christianity with universal institutions such as the Papacy and the (Roman) Empire, this local focus has been replaced by awareness of an international dimension to human affairs. But how is this principle to be applied and institutionalized? Should there be some sort of world government? Is globalization a trend to be resisted or welcomed?

Compendium, 441 [link here]


 Concern for an ordered and peaceful coexistence within the human family prompts the Magisterium to insist on the need to establish “some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all and endowed with effective power to safeguard, on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights”. In the course of history, despite the changing viewpoints of the different eras, there has been a constant awareness of the need for a similar authority to respond to worldwide problems arising from the quest for the common good: it is essential that such an authority arise from mutual agreement and that it not be imposed, nor must it be understood as a kind of “global super-State”.

Political authority exercised at the level of the international community must be regulated by law, ordered to the common good and respectful of the principle of subsidiarity. “The public authority of the world community is not intended to limit the sphere of action of the public authority of the individual political community, much less to take its place. On the contrary, its purpose is to create, on a world basis, an environment in which the public authorities of each political community, their citizens and intermediate associations can carry out their tasks, fulfil their duties and exercise their rights with greater security”. 

Reflections on last Wednesday's meeting (5 November)

Well, perhaps the picture isn't exactly a memorial to the most successful attempt at Catholic social engagement -but we did meet on 5 November!.

Lively and wide ranging discussion as ever. As ever, I'll stick to picking out just a couple of issues:

1) Universal destination of goods. (In surfing the internet to address this point, I came across this post by the US Acton Institute: here. I think it would be fair to describe the Institute as a fairly right wing Christian think tank, and I wouldn't want to support all they say here. However, I think it does give an interesting entirely free market perspective on the issue.)

Under the principle of 'the universal destination of goods', the Compendium (449) refers to Pope Paul VI's Populorum Progressio (22):


In the very first pages of Scripture we read these words: "Fill the earth and subdue it." This teaches us that the whole of creation is for man, that he has been charged to give it meaning by his intelligent activity, to complete and perfect it by his own efforts and to his own advantage.

Now if the earth truly was created to provide man with the necessities of life and the tools for his own progress, it follows that every man has the right to glean what he needs from the earth. The recent Council reiterated this truth: "God intended the earth and everything in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus, under the leadership of justice and in the company of charity, created goods should flow fairly to all." 

All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation. Redirecting these rights back to their original purpose must be regarded as an important and urgent social duty.


I think the key point here is that property (goods) is simply an extension of our own activity (work). Just as we have a duty to our fellow human beings, so the things that come into our possession through our work also must be used for others. That doesn't mean that our property isn't any less our property, but it does mean that it is wrong if that property isn't placed at the service of humankind. (How precisely that it is to be best done is of course a separate -and often difficult question.)

2) Competition. I have heard the jibe before that, just because the Church is a hierarchical, centrally planned organization, it finds it difficult to understood to understand or value the decentralized competitiveness of a capitalist free market! Whatever truth there may be in that, in principle, Catholic social teaching does accept the importance of competition between enterprises:

The free market is an institution of social importance because of its capacity to guarantee effective results in the production of goods and services. Historically, it has shown itself able to initiate and sustain economic development over long periods. There are good reasons to hold that, in many circumstances, “the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs”.The Church's social doctrine appreciates the secure advantages that the mechanisms of the free market offer, making it possible as they do to utilize resources better and facilitating the exchange of products. These mechanisms “above all ... give central place to the person's desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person”.


A truly competitive market is an effective instrument for attaining important objectives of justice: moderating the excessive profits of individual businesses, responding to consumers' demands, bringing about a more efficient use and conservation of resources, rewarding entrepreneurship and innovation, making information available so that it is really possible to compare and purchase products in an atmosphere of healthy competition. [Compendium, 347.]

However, it also suggests the limitations of such free markets. How that balance is to be struck is never a matter of a formula, but always a matter of a prudential balancing of the tensions involved. In the end, we are all in this together (more formally, the principle of solidarity) and whatever we do must be done with the ultimate aim of serving everyone, even if the means to this are by no means always clear.

I'll post at the beginning of next week about the next meeting (12 Nov).

Looking forward to session 5 November

The coming session this Wednesday will be focusing on: Dignity of work and property. The special claim of the poor. Social exclusion.

I think one of the keys to the Catholic understanding of work and property is a distinction between the subjective and the objective side of work:


 Human work has a twofold significance: objective and subjective. In the objective sense, it is the sum of activities, resources, instruments and technologies used by men and women to produce things, to exercise dominion over the earth, in the words of the Book of Genesis. In the subjective sense, work is the activity of the human person as a dynamic being capable of performing a variety of actions that are part of the work process and that correspond to his personal vocation: “Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the ‘image of God' he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization. As a person, man is therefore the subject of work”.

Work in the objective sense constitutes the contingent aspect of human activity, which constantly varies in its expressions according to the changing technological, cultural, social and political conditions. Work in the subjective sense, however, represents its stable dimension, since it does not depend on what people produce or on the type of activity they undertake, but only and exclusively on their dignity as human beings. This distinction is critical, both for understanding what the ultimate foundation of the value and dignity of work is, and with regard to the difficulties of organizing economic and social systems that respect human rights. [Compendium, 270] [Link here]

In essence, work is important because it produces external goods but also because it reflects human creativity. The lack of suitable work or property excludes people from society in both of these ways: it cuts them off from the goods of wealth, but also from the internal goods which flow from the exercise of one's full human potential.

Looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday!

Final reflections on 29 Oct session: Marxism

I've probably spent an inordinately long time reflecting on the last meeting, but I wanted to give a thorough treatment of the issue of authority in the Church in relation to Catholic social teaching, but also to give space to an important sets of issues that came up in our discussion of Marxism. It's to the latter that I now turn.

One of the things that struck me forcibly about last Wednesday was the strength of feeling about Marxism that was expressed by those who had lived in countries from the former Soviet Bloc. On reflection, my surprise was in itself surprising: why on earth wouldn't people who had suffered from totalitarianism feel strongly about it? Part of the answer to that (besides my naivety) is the difference between experience and ideas. My main contact with Marxism has been as part of an undergraduate philosophy course on Hegel and Marx and with a few communist (British) intellectuals: that's very different from the experience of the reality of a system which declared itself Marxist.

Frankly, I'd been struggling over what to say about all that, other than to acknowledge the tensions. However, re-arranging some bookshelves this morning brought to light a collection of Roger Scruton's essays (Gentle Regrets) which I hadn't looked at for almost ten years. In one essay, 'Stealing from churches', he reflects on the influence of religion, particularly Catholicism, in his life, and, more particularly, on a (chaste) love affair with a young woman in Communist Poland:

The communists had justified themselves as the servants of history, the midwives who would ease the birth of a new order that was in any case inevitable. In every place where they had achieved power they released what was lowest in human nature, rejoicing in destruction and despising every loyalty that was not motivated by cynical calculation. In every communist country you were presented with a vision of chaos. It was as though a great tide flowed through the sewers, into which the people were being thrust by the armed insentient guardians of an order whose main aim was to make people unnecessary, an order in which, as Marx and Engels rightly prophesied, 'the government of men would give way to the administration of things'. (p.76)

That description of the experience of communism, however, reflects directly the ideas of Marxism:

Al the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property. (Marx: Communist Manifesto.)

In other words, the reality of the communism is not accidental to its understanding of human beings but flows as a direct consequence of its ideas.

One of the features of this course that I was determined to focus on -and which is different from many other treatments of Catholic social teaching- is that of examining the teaching as a coherent whole, and of examining its theological and anthropological underpinnings: without understanding the theoretical basis for Catholic social teaching, it becomes easily seen as merely a collection of rather fuzzy ideas, some more plausible than others. Unless account is taken of key aspects of that theoretical underpinning, the full strength (and indeed content) of the teaching can't be seen.

It's difficult to sum up the essentials of that theoretical underpinning since it is so entwined with the whole of the Catholic understanding of the world and God. But key issues that spring immediately to mind are:

a) The supernatural end of human beings in the beatific vision of God: leave out the pursuit of  God and human life makes little sense.

b) The existence of natural law based on objective truths about human nature: human beings cannot just freely remake themselves after any pattern they happen to desire.

c) The flourishing of human beings through living in communities such as the family, the voluntary associations of civil society, and the state: some patterns of life work; others don't.

d) The possibility of a real, albeit imperfect justice being achieved by virtuous action: revolution and class antagonism aren't the only solutions.


OK! That's enough about last Wednesday's class!! I'll say something about the next meeting (5 Nov) at the beginning of next week.